How to Pack Your Kitchen

Why the Kitchen Is the Hardest Room to Pack

The kitchen is the room most people dread packing — and for good reason. It’s full of fragile items, awkward shapes, and things you use every single day. It’s also the room where we see the most damage after a move, almost always because items weren’t wrapped properly or boxes were left half-empty.

The good news is that kitchen packing is straightforward once you know the technique. It comes down to three principles: wrap everything individually, eliminate all movement inside the box, and pack plates vertically. Get those three things right and your kitchen will arrive in one piece.

Packing Paper Is Your Best Friend

For the kitchen, packing paper is the material you’ll use above everything else. It’s unprinted newspaper — no ink, no toxins, and fully recyclable. A single ream (around £20) will typically cover a standard kitchen with some to spare.

You might assume bubble wrap is the go-to choice, but it’s actually better saved for larger fragile items that won’t fit neatly into boxes. For glasses, plates, bowls, and crockery, packing paper does a better job because it moulds around the shape and creates a tighter cushion inside the box.

How to Wrap Glasses

The technique here is simpler than most people expect. You’re not trying to create a perfectly neat parcel — you’re trying to create a crumple zone around the glass.

Take a sheet of packing paper, scrunch it loosely around the glass so there’s a layer of cushioned paper on all sides. The goal is to stop glasses from touching each other inside the box. Glass on glass, even through a thin layer of paper, can crack on impact. A scrunched cushion absorbs that force.

Once wrapped, place the glass upright in your small/heavy box (the 30×50cm size from Lesson 2). Fill each row before moving to the next, and stuff scrunched paper into every gap as you go.

How to Pack Plates and Ceramics

Plates follow the same crumple zone principle, but with one crucial difference: always stack plates vertically, never flat.

This is the single most important kitchen packing tip we can give you. When plates are stacked flat and a box is dropped, the impact travels straight through the entire stack — and you can lose every plate in one go. Stood vertically, like records in a crate, a drop is far more likely to damage only one or two plates rather than the whole set.

Wrap each plate individually in packing paper. You don’t need to be overly neat — just ensure the entire surface is covered and there’s some scrunched paper creating a buffer. Place them vertically in the box, side by side, with crumpled paper between each one.

Once all your plates are in, look for remaining gaps. Smaller fragile items like egg cups, small bowls, or glass jars can often slot into the spaces around the edges. For items with a delicate base — wine glasses, vases, stemmed bowls — stand them upright and pack extra cushioning around the top where they’re most vulnerable.

The Zero-Movement Rule

This is the principle that separates a well-packed box from a badly packed one. When you’ve finished packing a box, pick it up and give it a gentle shake. If anything moves, it’s not done.

Every gap, void, and space inside the box is an opportunity for items to shift during transit. Shifting means contact. Contact means chips, cracks, and breaks.

Fill every gap with scrunched packing paper. If you run out of paper, non-breakable items like plastic cups, silicone spatulas, or tea towels make excellent gap fillers. The goal is a box that feels solid and dense when sealed — nothing rattling, nothing sliding.

How to Pack Loose Drawer Items

Every kitchen has drawers full of loose utensils, gadgets, and odds and ends. Tipping these straight into a box creates chaos — items scatter, small pieces get lost, and unpacking becomes a treasure hunt.

Instead, gather loose items into groups and wrap each bundle in a sheet of packing paper. Cutlery can go together in sets — spoons in one parcel, forks in another. Kitchen gadgets, peelers, whisks, and small tools can be bundled similarly. A small piece of tape keeps the parcel closed if you’re worried about it unravelling, but in a well-packed box, the pressure from surrounding items usually holds everything in place.

This technique works everywhere in the house, not just the kitchen — bathroom cupboards, bedside table drawers, the random “junk drawer” that every household has. Anywhere you’ve got a collection of small loose items that need to stay together, a paper bundle keeps them organised and easy to unpack.

Why Half-Empty Boxes Are a Problem

One of the most common packing mistakes we see — and it causes more issues than people realise — is boxes that aren’t packed full.

When a box has a void at the top, it collapses under the weight of boxes stacked on top of it. We’ve seen entire stacks of boxes buckle because one half-empty box at the bottom gave way. Even if that box was packed carefully, the crushed cardboard transfers pressure onto the contents and the boxes above.

Every box should be packed to the top. If you run out of appropriate items for that box, fill the remaining space with scrunched packing paper, towels, tea towels, or soft clothing. Anything that fills the void and gives the box its structural strength back.

This is especially important with book boxes. Books are heavy and dense, and a fully packed book box holds its shape under stacking. A half-full book box is a disaster waiting to happen — the weight shifts to one side, the unsupported cardboard folds, and suddenly you’ve got a leaning tower of moving boxes in the back of the van.

Pro Tip from Jay

“When I pick up a kitchen box and give it a shake, I should hear absolutely nothing. No rattling, no sliding, no clinking. That's how I know it's packed right. If there's movement, there's risk — it's that simple.”

— Jay Newton, Director